More on my fiction writing

July 01, 2013

Young men and fire

Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often
the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out
exactly what happened... — Norman Maclean

Smokejumpers and other wildfire-fighters call them "shake and bakes," the portable shelters they carry. These cocoons of foil and fiberglas offer the firefighters at best a 50-percent chance and are deployed as a last resort, as when the wind shifts and the living devil of fire traps and turns on them. The hope is that the fire will pass over quickly. Otherwise, "the only thing your shake and bake will do is allow you to have an open-casket funeral,” one crew supervisor told Wired. Such dark humor is a necessary component of dangerous, sometimes deadly jobs. The Prescott Fire Department's Granite Mountain Hotshots team reportedly deployed its shake-and-bakes Sunday in a conflagration at Yarnell, amid triple-digit temperatures and high winds. Nineteen died. As I write, the fire is at zero containment.

This is the deadliest event for wildfire-fighters in modern history. Deadlier than Colorado's South Canyon fire in 1994 on Storm King Mountain. Deadlier than the 1949 Mann Gulch blaze in Montana, which inspired Norman Maclean's classic study, Young Men and Fire. a book both elegiac and forensically definitive.

Here is what I don't want: Cheap sentimentalizing and cynical religiosity from politicians who are otherwise hostile to public employees, adequate government budgets and sensible land-use policies. The ones who use public pensions and unions as evil hand-puppets to distract citizens from the screwing they are getting from the plutocrats. The tax cutters and climate-change "deniers." Please spare me your sudden compassion for public servants and first responders. Spare me your flags and "USA! USA!" and endless evocation of "heroes" if this is mere denial and lazy thinking. Look: I get the shock and grief. I used to be a first responder myself, cross-trained to deploy with forestry fire teams, and more than once was nearly killed (in the city). I know those men are with the Lord and all their tears have been dried, and I pray that their families are given comfort and grace. But I am not going to endlessly tweet this or post it on Facebook. We owe them more. Read on if you agree. This will not be a popular column. It is a necessary one.

This is a developing story and much is not known. Yet this is a time when the media must rise to their duty to serve the public trust. Don't be the media. Be the press. I don't care about the "emotional" statement of Gov. Jan Brewer, much less the self-serving bleats of assorted members of the Kookocracy. I understand the fire chief asking that we "respect the investigation...Please don't pry..." But I also pray that news organizations somewhere are unleashing their top investigative reporters. Prying will be necessary, but not the sleazy television info-tainment of jamming microphones in the faces of the grieving. We need serious journalism.

It is not "too soon."

Reporters will need to learn the arcane specialty of this kind of firefighting, part science but also part deadly art. They should be reading up on both the Mann Gulch and South Canyon fires. Learning how something should work right, and how it can go wrong, will be essential to understanding what happened, recommending reforms if necessary and holding those in power to account. Speaking of which: What has been the budget history for fighting wildfires; is it adequate, keeping up with population, building, etc. And please name names of those in the Legislature and elsewhere who have opposed the necessary resources.

It is not too soon to explain how exurban sprawl has not only profaned rural Arizona but also put houses and entire subdivisions in dangerous fire zones. The interface between the built environment and the wilderness has been blurring for more than two decades. This as drought, the bark beetle infestation and climate change have turned the forests of Arizona into calamities awaiting a match or lightning strike. Population has grown enormously, and in rural Arizona most of the increases have come outside the footprints of the older towns, most of which were more sheltered from forest fires. Especially after the defeat of Prop. 200 at the turn of the century, which would have imposed modest growth boundaries, a fearful and greed-mad Real Estate Industrial Complex went on a wild bender of building across the state, including in the fire zones. Thousands of Phoenicians flee the summer to their "cabins" in the High Country, often just tract houses in subdivisions, heedless of the risk. Shadowy and often corrupt land swaps were snuck through Congress to turn pieces of the National Forests — the people's resources — over to developers for private gain. What remains a wild place is getting more dangerous. And tax dollars must be spent fighting fires that are a natural part of the forest because they are so much more likely to endanger property that didn't exist 40 years ago.

I remember Yarnell circa 1970. It was a wide spot in the road with a gas station and a little roadside park full of religious statues. Pinons and boulders surrounded it. So did gulches and hillsides that even a Boy Scout knew were lethal avenues for fire. That road was one of the most harrowing highways in the west, a narrow band of asphalt with few guardrails and deep dropoffs clinging to Yarnell Hill. Few people braved the highway, but there were few people overall. All of Yavapai County held about 36,700, one third living in the county seat of Prescott (and I mean in Prescott). Towns were compact and, except for the Mountain Club south of Prescott, few houses were in the pines. Those that were happened to be real cabins. This compactness was fortified by the fact that the towns were surrounded by National Forests. The vast ponderosa pine and pinon stands of the High Country were enjoying relatively wet years. One did not go into the wild without proper woodsman skills, tools and water. One was fanatical about ensuring camp fires were out (douse, stir, douse, cover with dirt, stir, etc.).

In the new Arizona, people wander the wilderness with the obliviousness of Valinda Jo Elliott, who, equipped with flip-flops, cigarettes, lighter and a towel ignited the worst fire in state history. In 2012, the county's population was nearly 213,000. The old Yarnell Hill highway has been widened, guard-railed and re-engineered for the standard 85-mile-per-hour automobile traveling speed. Google Earth shows a Yarnell that is larger, spread out and including at least two substantial curvilinear subdivisions that appear to lie on the kind of topography that fires love. These subdivisions, often the result of land-swap hustles, are classic examples of externalities not being priced in, everything from the cost of fire fighting, highways and other infrastructure to the greenhouse gases emitted by increased driving. One huge externality is the danger of fire. And, of course, much of the Western forest is facing extinction from climate change, drought and bark beetles. Monster fires are expected to be more common (a huge change from when I was a boy).

It will be essential to scrutinize the skill level of the crew (were they really "elite" by the gold standards of training) and if mistakes were made that resulted in being trapped. The official investigation must be subjected to skepticism and scrutiny by independent experts. Mistakes were made in both South Canyon and Mann Gulch. This will be painful but necessary. If the press is culpable in a cover-up, it will be a criminal act. We must fight the American tendency to "move on," as has happened with the Newtown massacre and the Skagit River (and Minneapolis) bridge collapse. And the Giffords shooting.

There is the larger issue of sustainability in a state with too many people, in the worst possible building patterns, facing climate change. It is not too soon. It is very late. Unless these issues are discussed seriously and some intelligent responses made, then the butcher's bill for fire fatalities will keep growing.

Comments

Within seven days, Yarnell, 122 degrees and a huge dust storm in Phoenix. Arizona is ground zero for climate change. I'm not convinced that the state is a sustainable habitat for most beyond this generation.

Thank you for bringing up the crocodile tears of politicians who have demonized public sector employees. They are called "heroes" when tragedy strikes, and lazy ignoramuses sucking off the government teat the rest of the time.

Jon, I don't know if you saw this piece I posted earlier today: "Global warming is on track to double the number of wild fires in the US by 2050, but very few predictions of this type have panned out over the last ten years. Usually, the degree of severity of climate effects from global warming is much larger than predicted, or comes sooner than predicted. Some people try to push responsibility for more fires off on bad management practices, but this, while it may be a factor, is a) old news and addressed in many areas decades ago; b) pales in comparison to the effects of drought and c) pales in comparison to massive tree death which in turn is exacerbated if not simply directly caused by anthropogenic climate change." The link is http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/07/01/honoring-the-19-dead-at-yarnell-hill-az/

One sad irony is that these wildlands firefighters were avid outdoors types with deep, sincere, undying love for Arizona's natural landscape. Just last week they battled the Doce Fire to save a magnificent alligator juniper that few of us can be bothered to get away from our TVs to go see for ourselves:http://dcourier.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=120588

Good job Jon! Now, we'll see whether there are real journalists with the cojones to investigate the decisions that led up to the tragedy. And what you say is certainly prescient about our foolhardy escapes (without defensible perimeters) in the AZ "high country". Stuff like this may actually give rise to more "climate refugees".

I was in Prescott over the weekend. It was hotter there than I've ever experienced, although wonderfully mild by comparison to the sprawling inferno we call home. Prescott's serenely beautiful downtown now harbors a perpetual caravansary of tourists, mostly Boomers, busy ladling frozen yogurt and ice cream into their bewildered faces.

We've discussed this before so there's no reason to pick the scab about Prescott's wanton and horrifying overdevelopment. The reach of Phoenix is beginning to turn distinct towns like New River into exurbs, and even Black Canyon City seems to be collapsing into that telltale farrago of trailer parks and retail strips. Where does this nightmare end?

The wildfires give a hint. Blading the fire lanes into the pristine desert ought to give more sensitive souls (Cal, this is your cue) a mortal shudder. Some things were, we thought, sacred. And as awful as Phoenix has become, I never dreamed all of Arizona was at risk for kudzu-like encampments of Real Americans. Silly, silly me.

Climate change, despite the reassurances of our Know Nothing class, is going to turn this state into a sunbaked turd. Flagstaff will look like Apache Junction in 50 years. This isn't some prediction ala Alvin Toffler. This is already happening. The pine bark beetle is both augur and auger.

I want to get on my knees and beg my contemporaries to hasten their overdue transition from the physical to the ethereal. Please, enough of your vacation homes in the high country. Enough of your Winnebagos and all-you-can-eat buffets. Go home to your maker knowing you lived high on the hog. Which just happens to be the American sign of the cross.

Jon, It will take a team of investigative journalists with "sources."
I would not expect much from state officials.
Soleri, U all know my opinion, more road less wilderness and less people.
And given the condition of the Colorado river there will soon not be enough water to put out a Las Vegas Casino fire let alone major forest fires.
Why are we fighting fires in the forest or wilderness. Before the invention of fire fighters what course of action was taken to put out fires in the wilderness.

Do home owners give thought and preparation to there forest home being in fire danger. U cant even get a building code law requiring new homes to have sprinkling systems.

Homeless has got it right and as I have mentioned many times the story ending is in the "Good News" by Abbey.

!00% agreement. Remember this area from the 50s and 60s. My Dad drove the backroads and we hiked and camped throughout the area. And yes, Yarnell Hill was really scary.
One Correction - - I believe nineteen were killed.
Bear

What a cynical column. Most of us realize that Arizona has been developed in a sprawling manner but to launch an anti-establishment and anti-development tyraid like that is ridiculous. What about the people in the Midwest who live in flood plans? What about the people in the Midwest who live in blizzard prone areas? What about the people in The south who live in the path of hurricanes? What about all of California who is in a massive earthquake zone? Wildfires are a natural disaster just like any other natural disaster. No need to condemn the whole state over it. And to berate politicians for caring, Jesus Christ man they are people just like the rest of us.

Reddit. my american indian wife thought the folks u mentioned above were just dumb. One of her favorite sayings was her people didnt pitch tepees in river beds.
And how many mobile homes are we going to keep replacing in tornado zones. And are we going to continue to let people build burnable structures in areas prone to fire. And let people build structureds within a mile of any coast line. And why send the fire fighters just let it burn like it did 10000 yesrs ago.

Excellent points about not pricing in the real costs of building in what should be wild areas, and certainly not subsidized development. Not only such increasingly hot, fire prone areas, but flood plains and coastal areas.

There is a disconnect on the Reddit bit. People have always lived in tornado, earthquake and hurricane zones and flood plains (think of the Nile floods for its agricultural benefits). Really, what speck of the earth doesn't have an unavoidable weather or geological drawback? But people who lived in forests clear cut everything near their homestead to build it and to protect. That fire break does not happen anymore and the modern houses are built of highly combustable materials. Like building your own Hell.

Best thing the gob'mint can do is let private insurers do the cost/benefit analysis. Declaring Yarnell a disaster area so the federal funds can flow only adds to the problem.

Great column Jon. I wanted to mention that the Yakima Herald Republic investigated the deadly Thirty Mile Fire and found a series of management mistakes led to the death of four young firefighters in 2001 in the Okanogan National Forest.Small newspapers can do this important journalism.

What if a defensible perimeter were mandated for Arizona's mountain homes? Wouldn't it mitigate the risks taken by the folks who seem to deny reality? Just go through the White Mountains in the Pinetop area. See all the pretty cabins with trees no more than 5' away. What is it in our reptillian brains that causes us to temp fate in this kind of mindless fashion?

I lived in Prescott from 1974 to 1992. I can't stand it now because of all the development. Open woods are now off limits for wealthy retirees. This really hits me because I've seen all the development around Yarnell too, with clusters of ranches everywhere. I feel that most people want to live wherever they want and maybe we should try to limit our sprawl. Bottom line is that if you live in the woods you better get fire insurance because they should let most fires burn naturally. (Lots of exceptions like gas lines and such but that needs to be addressed in another conversation)

The 35 members of the Diamond Mountain cult doing a 3 year retreat south of Bowie in frame and chicken wire shitboxes badly built in a brush filled canyon nearly burnt up two years ago.A last minute wind change saved them but burnt up a bunch of homes in well names Ash Canyon 30 miles to the east. the lesson they took from this wasn't to move or cut brush .They decided god had saved them and would do so again.

Ramblings on fires and floods:
I drove up and down Yarnell Hill a few times while I lived in AZ.
The closest I got to forest firefighting was while working a summer camp on Orcas Island. Island fires can be devastating because there is only so much room to burn and few safe places to hide aside from the boats. The (male) staff at the camp was expected to be ready to help out any time. Only one fire broke out while I was there and I was designated to stay behind with the campers- possibly because of my age of 17 or 18.
One got to Orcas by Washington State Ferry. The terminal in Fidalgo was reached from Seattle by taking the first exit on I-5 north of the Skagit River Bridge.
Jon and I had just parted company when the Arizona floods of 1977 and 1979 took out most of the bridges in Phoenix. John Wyman, whom we both worked with, was the first vehicle over I-10 when they re-opened it- driving his ambulance with a patient in back. That same year I had to negotiate a one lane detour where the Hassayampa washed out lanes of US 60 at Wickenburg.
We had a fire last fall east of Seattle in the Cascades. I drove over to look at it while it was mostly contained but still burning. I stopped at a roadside fruit stand where I could see the burned area and smoke from over the ridge where hotspots still blazed. I knew better than to go too close or get in the way of the professionals. This was close enough for mere curiosity.
The locals were trying to keep business as usual but the fire had almost reached the fruit stand a few days before and everyone there knew someone who lost a home or ranch or farm to the fire. I settled for the stories, bought as much as I could to help the local economy and drove home.
On another blog I read, I read about a fellow who is training to be a doctor. He was criticized for being weak, fat and lazy by someone who had never met him. Part of his reply was (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "I've got scars because I run towards natural disasters. Which way do you run?" That doesn't sound weak or lazy to me. Running toward danger is what Jon and I did and what he still does with his writing.
Keep running Jon- bicarb!

I was among the first to comment on Alan Dean Foster's NYT article. I wrote: the North American continent is subject to more natural disasters than similarly-sized landmasses because first, its geography and natural climate that gives rise to winds, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods; second, the continent is battered by the hurricanes that rise over African waters. With the effects of climate change ever more visible, it is more important than ever that we stand up for public workers and resolve to hire the best.

I, as you, become nauseated by the croc tears of the "Kookocracy." Our public sector unions are the final target of the anti-union forces in America and we must protect them.

Public-sector unions are always eliminated in fascist regimes. They establish a floor on wages and benefits. When they are gone, we will be even more screwed than we are now.

Mike Davis's excellent book City of Quartz describes the insane development of the Los Angeles area and how it puts residents in danger.

When I hear politicians speak who have openly decried and derided Federal involvement in initial-response issues or who have denounced our hard-working firefighters as freeloaders and union employees, their calls to keep the deceased and those they left behind in our collective thoughts and prayers seems disingenuous at best and hypocritical at worst.

Of the investigation of the fire, Jon and all, I suspect that we'll hear nothing more than "it was an unpredictable tragedy caused by rapidly changing winds." (On the local media this morning, we've been bombarded with the final picture text messages sent from the deceased firefighters to their families...which I don't know should be in the public realm.) We'll never see the investigation that we need to have, and one you rightly mention in your column: how Arizona rampant exurban development is raping and pillaging the last natural defenses that we have left.

"Speaking of which: What has been the budget history for fighting wildfires; is it adequate, keeping up with population, building, etc. And please name names of those in the Legislature and elsewhere who have opposed the necessary resources."

As you point out, land-management in tinderbox areas with growing populations is critical to preventing such wildfires to begin with. So, not only do budgets need to provide funds for firefighting, but also for fire prevention.

Most of the Yarnell fire, especially in the initial stages, occurred on state trust land. The Arizona Office of the State Forrester is responsible for fire prevention and fire suppression on state trust land.

According to Arizona Deputy State Forrester Jerry Payne: "The costs per acre of such prevention efforts ranges from $400 to $1,000. Treating the chaparral around Yarnell is at the high end of that range. It requires cutting and chipping piñon and juniper, whacking brush, and raking needles and duff."

The same article notes that the Arizona legislature has budgeted $3 million for each of the last four years for fire suppression. That means fighting fires, not preventing them by land-management. It appears that no additional funds are allocated by the state for fire prevention. Also, note that this funding is for the entire state, not the Yarnell area.

In determining the area that needed to be thinned, cut, and otherwise subjected to preventive land management, note that the Yarnell fire grew more than 10 times overnight from 800 to 8,400 acres.

Such a fast spreading fire suggests that this is a minimum acreage figure for fire prevention land management in the Yarnell area since lightning fires could have broken out at any point in the overall area. Arguably, a smaller area could be managed by means of firebreaks around the most densely populated areas, but this is the figure I will use here in arriving at a cost estimate.

Because expert opinion has deemed the Yarnell area to be "near the top of the scale" ($1,000) in terms of cost per acre for preventive management, I'm going to use $850 per acre as a cost figure.

Simple arithmetic shows that the cost of managing 8,400 acres of such area runs to just over $7,000,000 which is more than twice the total state-wide, state-allocated budget for firefighting (both prevention and suppression) on state trust land.

So, at a glance the agency responsible for managing the land where the fire occurred is woefully underfunded.

Beyond the obvious, and avoidable (but insufficiently budgeted) failure in fire-preventive land-management in the Yarnell area, the question has been raised whether fire-fighting practices and/or administrative decisions are to blame. There is some evidence that conditions were exceptional and that the firefighters were not committing egregious errors:

However, a close reading shows that many of the opinions given in the article are based on secondhand information and on assumptions about what "should" or "would" have happened had actual conditions matched the assumptions of the consultant.

The previous Arizona record was six firefighters killed in the Dude Fire of 1990. But that was 23 years ago, and drought conditions have been severe in much of the state in the years since then, while training has improved in response to that fire. Granted that wildfires can "create their own weather systems" and that shifting winds can cause fires to move very quickly over tinderbox areas, the state has had plenty of raging wildfires in tinderbox areas under a wide variety of weather conditions since then. One might have expected at least a scaled-down version of Yarnell to have happened since then, but it hasn't. So, it may be early to conclude that conditions were accurately reported, that the firefighters received the information, and that those who did receive it shared it and acted upon it properly in making decisions.

Local and topical issues obviously demand a timely and specific response; that Mr. Talton did not create an essay devoted to the more general thesis that poor settlement planning is rampant nationally and under a wide variety of circumstances, is irrelevant.

Nor is it wrongful to criticize the hypocrisy of politicians who sabotage public services by means of their control of public budgets, because they have a fundamental aversion to government and a desire to "starve the beast", but who beat their chests, tear their hair, and wave little flags whenever the opportunity for self-aggrandizement occurs.

Finally, in a situation where the facts are uncertain and where public acceptance of "unavoidable tragedy" is the norm, somebody needs to publicly offer an alternative view and to encourage dispassionate scrutiny of the circumstances. If the "Rogue Columnist" isn't prepared to do this, who is?

P.S. Even if you reduce my estimate for the cost of fire prevention in the Yarnell area by a factor of 5, the cost for that alone is nearly half of the entire state's budget for firefighting (prevention and suppression) on state trust land. So, obviously the agency responsible for fire-preventive land management on nearly 9.3 million acres of state trust lands is woefully underfunded.

All those subdivisions in the forest should bewarned that they are not the priority during a major fire. Good zoning should limit their proliferation, but there is the pressure from well connected developers who can make millions and move on. The firefighters are pressured to save the homes. The book "The Thirtymile Fire" is an excellent book on the deadly forest fire. Many field supervisors retired as a result of this fire. It affects fire management today. Too many people in the forest. They cannot be protected.